Skylights

The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

– M.Zusak, The Book Thief

If I ever felt the need to own every color known to man I’d easily be asking for a palette with every hue the sky had ever attained. In fact if you stare just hard enough at the edge of the sky during a sunset or dawn break, you will notice a thin sliver of this color of light which you couldn’t possibly place anywhere in the spectrum. Which strangely has a dream like quality. If I could, I’d fill a glass bottle with this nameless color, seal it with a cork and stare at it all day.

Sometimes, the sky – especially in the early mornings – has a gradient of pale blue cascading to this mellow orange, seamlessly blending as if it were molten glass handcrafted to a perfect matte finish by an expert glassmith. The wispy streaks of cloud stashed around without a care. So carelessly, that it resembles art. I imagine it to be similar to the view from the bottom of a once rich, frothy cup of blue latté, now gone cold. The even surface not obscured by overly dense cream but accented by airy forgotten streaks of white. Like they’d disappear if you so much as blink.

And there is this one perfect moment every afternoon, though it rarely lasts, when the sky is liquid gold, like a fiery inferno wrapped in butter paper. Not red, not orange, not pink. Just simple gold. It’d stand so still, precariously lit, you’d think the faintest touch could send a ripple through the fluid sky. Some days, if the sky was clear enough, you’d seriously wonder what kept the heavens from opening up and pouring glistening streams of yellow metal down to earth. Maybe the gods decided our frail mortal selves couldn’t withstand heaven’s raging splendor all at once. If Armageddon would have to come someday, it would probably come at this time of the day as a glorious golden downpour.

Dusk, just before which, comes this beacon at the horizon, as the epic battle of light and dark concludes with the savage night ambushing the dwindling day. The day will only go down one way and that is with all guns blazing crimson, the sky bleeding. You would be staring at the changing colors unsuspectingly and just like that, like there had been a time warp, it’d be night. It’s frustrating how you can never really pick the exact moment in time when day ends and night begins. Like how you can never seem to pick the exact second you fall asleep and tip over the edge to oblivion or pinpoint that perfect moment when you fall in love. It’s this almost nonexistent quantum of time, which is so fleeting it slips through your fingers like water.

Imagine standing at the peak of the tallest mountain with the wind in your hair and watching the clouds at your feet. Standing at the edge of a cliff, gazing at the vast stretches of uninterrupted terrain, knowing the smallest disturbance would tip you over the edge. We love being made to feel special and important. You know what might actually contest the feeling? The exact opposite. Feeling utterly insignificant. The sky can make you feel insanely so. Really though, how important can you actually feel while you have a horizon to horizon view of the vast dawning sky? How important can you feel on those clear nights in the countryside when you watch the gazillion matches flickering in the sky? Each little spark of light could be someone else’s sun. Moments like that could convince you that infinity indeed exists, true and proud. And you’d be just another minor, teetering-on-nothing detail .You would live, die and become the land which makes the planet, which might someday fall into the sun and in turn burst into a splendid supernova, throwing off space dust which would finally be free to make its way through the universe.

Art is expressed through many mediums. Words and their combinations – finite. The seven notes of music – many but finite. But color- god, color! – from the expanse the human eye can perceive, to the even bigger expanse it can’t, is explosively infinite.